A year ago, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle performed their final duties as full-time 'senior' royals and stepped back to pursue financial independence. But it's not unheard of for royals to work in the real world. In fact, for royals who are not in direct line to inherit the throne it’s not all public appearances, state visits and glitz and glamor. From airline pilots to bankers to authors, click or scroll through the members of royal households who go out to work for a living.

Although Princess Märtha Louise of Norway retains her place in the line of succession to the Norwegian throne, she has worked with more freedom from her role as a princess since 2002. She’s a certified physiotherapist, but has never practiced her profession, and instead used her fascination with traditional Norwegian folklore to establish a commercial entertainment business.

And it doesn’t stop there. In 2004, her first book, a children’s book entitled Why Kings and Queens Don’t Wear Crowns, was published. The royal also claims she can communicate with animals and angels and started her own alternative therapy center Astarte Education, which has been subjected to intense scrutiny over the years. 

Prince Nikolai of Denmark – pictured here with his parents – is being heralded as the latest regal heartthrob. And the young royal is pursuing a career as a fashion model.

Prince Nikolai has walked the catwalk for the likes of Dior Homme (pictured). Unlike some of his peers, Nikolai has no choice but to work, as it has been decided that the seventh in line to the Danish throne will not receive any money from his grandmother Queen Margrethe II.

Following in the footsteps of her father Prince Andrew the Duke of York, Princess Beatrice has set herself up as a business matchmaker, and bagged her first-high profile client in the process, Afiniti – a company which provides software for call centers.

The Princess, who got married in 2020 in a small socially-distanced ceremony, is said to have held down multiple roles over the years, including working at Sandbridge Capital, a retail-focused venture capital firm in New York and as a production analyst at Sony Pictures.

Princess Beatrice’s younger sister Eugenie has had a few jobs over the years. The princess worked for online auction house Paddle8 in New York from 2013 until 2015.

After she was headhunted while working at Paddle8, Eugenie joined the ranks of Mayfair-based gallery Hauser & Wirth as an associate director in the summer of 2015. Her hard work and determination hasn’t gone unnoticed as she was promoted to director in 2017, and it is said to be “well deserved”. Princess Eugenie is expecting her first child, which is due in February.

Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie's mother Sarah Ferguson stopped being a Royal Highness after her divorce from Prince Andrew in 1996, following their split four years earlier, but kept her Duchess of York title. Although she later told magazine Harper's Bazaar in 2007 that she wasn't keen on the divorce, but they went ahead because of her desire to work in the real world: "Andrew and I decided to make to make the divorce official so I could go off and get a job". She reportedly received £3 million as part of their divorce settlement, according to The Sunday Telegraph, and released an autobiography called My Story in 1997. She also took up the role as an ambassador for Weight Watchers (now called WW).

Since entering the world of work Sarah, Duchess of York has starred in TV series including The Duchess on the Estate (2009) and a mini-series on the Oprah Winfrey Network called Finding Sarah (2011). She has also made a foray into children's literature with her Budgie the Little Helicopter books and Little Red series, and in April 2020 launched a YouTube channel Storytime with Fergie and Friends, which features Sarah and other authors reading stories to children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her first novel Her Heart for a Compass is due to be published by famous British romantic publisher Mills & Boon in August this year.

This isn’t the most straightforward of royal fairy tales we’re afraid. Recently declared king of Rwanda, Emmanuel Bushayija and his fellow royals were exiled from Rwanda in the 1960s when the country became a republic following a referendum.

His appointment as king came after the death of his uncle, King Kigeli V, in 2016. Mr Bushayija has lived in exile in the UK since 2000 and runs his own security firm in Manchester, but also once worked for Pepsi Cola in Uganda.

Daughter to Anne, the UK’s Princess Royal, you may recognize Zara from the British equestrian team as she competed at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 and London 2012.

She followed in both her parents’ footsteps and became an accomplished rider, and has competed across countless competitions and events over the years. But her love for the world of horses doesn’t stop there, as Zara also designs her own range of equestrian clothing for Musto Outdoor Clothing.

Like his sister Zara, Peter is no stranger to having a “day job”, and tried his hand working at a few different companies. After graduating from college, he worked for Jaguar as corporate hospitality manager and then for WilliamsF1 racing as sponsorship accounts manager.

In 2005, he became a manager at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh, but Peter has held the position of managing director at sports management company SEL UK since 2012. He recently came under fire for appearing in an advert for Jersey milk on Chinese TV, playing on his royal connections. This has led commentators to suggest that Harry and Meghan might also pursue similar commercial opportunities now they have left 'the firm'.

Up until 2012, the Queen's nephew and Princess Margaret's son David Albert Charles Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon, ran his own high-end furniture and interior design business under the brand name Linley before selling it to the heir of a yachting family.

In 2015, Viscount Linley was promoted to Chairman of auction house Christie’s in Europe, the Middle East, Russia and India, following on from his former role of Chairman of Christie’s UK.

King Willem-Alexander has revealed he held down a part-time job as a ‘guest pilot’ for more than two decades. The Dutch king stepped down from his position after 21 years on KLM’s fleet of Fokker 70 planes.

The monarch to 17 million Dutch citizens describes flying as a “hobby” that allows him to leave his royal duties on the tarmac as he glides through the skies. The king will now retrain to fly Boeing 737s as the Fokkers will be phased out of service.

His Imperial Highness Prince Nazım Ziyaeddin Nazım Osmanoğlu, Imperial Prince of the Ottoman Empire – or Naz Osmanoglu as he prefers to be known – was actually born and raised in the UK, where he has remained. He's a member of the House of Osman, which no longer rules in Turkey, so Naz has pursued a career as a stand-up comedian.

The 34-year-old is happy to laugh about his royal roots, giving one of his solo shows the tongue-in-cheek title of Ottoman Without An Empire. The joker even made a video about Prince Harry's 2018 wedding to Meghan Markle.

Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece is married to Prince Pavlos of Greece but, as the Greek royal family was abolished in 1973, they may have royal titles but they need to work. Before marrying, Marie-Chantal was an heiress to her American investor father Robert Miller's duty-free empire and was a fashion designer who had worked with Andy Warhol.

Princess Marie-Chantal (pictured here with her daughter, Princess Maria-Olympia and actress Emma Watson at a fashion show) now runs her own children's clothing line, called Marie-Chantal.

The nephew of King Philippe of Belgium effectively abdicated when he married Italian journalist Elisabetta Maria Rosboch Von Wolkenstein in 2014. By not requesting official permission from his uncle it was thought to be a means to streamline the royal family, although retrospective permission was given in 2015. However, Prince Amedeo does work...

After completing a degree in Management at the London School of Economics, he worked for Deloitte in New York City. Prince Amedeo later went on to study for an MBA at the Columbia Business School and now works for private bank Gutzwiller in Basel, Switzerland.

Prince Amedeo's younger brother, Prince Joachim, has gone down a slightly different route to his sibling. As has been the tradition for many royals he began a military career. After studying at Bocconi University in Milan and the Nautical School in Brugge, the 29-year-old worked as a naval officer.

Last year, however, it was reported that he was undertaking an internship in Spain, but the royal got in trouble for traveling to the country from Belgium and not keeping to the 14-day quarantine rules. Prince Joachim was fined the equivalent of $12,600. Tenth in line to the throne, it is unlikely this young royal will ever be king.

Prince William may be a full-time royal and second in line to be King, but the Duke of Cambridge used to have a day job. Instead of resting on his royal name, he became the first royal in the line of succession ever to hold a civilian contract when he trained to be an army officer.

With years of military experience under his belt, Prince William gained a qualification to be pilot-in-command of a Sea King helicopter, but his active service as an RAF search and rescue pilot ended in September 2013. His most recent role was helicopter pilot in the East Anglian Air Ambulance, but he has since stepped down from his position to focus on his royal duties full-time. 

Over recent years, Prince Harry has moved away from his party animal persona, especially since starting his relationship with now-wife Meghan Markle. But before his May 2018 nuptials Harry had a day job. For 10 years he worked in the British Army, completing two tours of Afghanistan, where he was eventually made captain. He also launched the Invictus Games for injured military personnel in 2014. And now he is married, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have started to carve out a new career for themselves...

Prince Harry and Meghan officially stepped back from their roles as 'senior' royals in January 2020 and the couple, who set up their base in California, has since announced several projects, including their new charity foundation Archewell. But the pair are making most waves in media. In September 2020 news broke that the pair had signed a deal with Netflix to produce docuseries and series for the platform, and in December a separate deal with Spotify and the couple's newly-formed "audio-first" production company Archewell Audio was announced. Harry and Meghan's first podcast in the series came out that same month and featured singer Elton John and the voice of their 19-month-old son Archie, the first time he has been heard in public.  

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